Food delivery platform Swiggy is set to raise up to $500 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a market valuation of nearly $5.5 billion, according to reliable industry sources. The competition is getting fierce as people order more food online in India amid the second wave of COVID-19. 

Softbank is in "advanced stages of talks to invest "up to $400-$500 million" into the food delivery startup, sources told IANS. 

This funding will be additional to $800 million (about Rs 5,862 crore) Swiggy raised earlier this month with Falcon Edge Capital, Amansa Capital, Think Investments, Carmignac and Goldman Sachs joining as new investors. Swiggy was valued at $3.7 billion when it raised funds in February last year.

The fresh fundraising comes at a time when its arch rival Zomato is planning for a $750 million-$1 billion IPO later this year.

According to company founder Sriharsha Majety, the earlier round of $800 million funding "gives the company a lot more firepower than the planned investment for our current business lines". 

"Given our unfettered ambition though, we will continue to seed/experiment new offerings for the future that may be ready for investment later," he had told the employees in an internal memo.

"We will just need to now relentlessly invent and execute over the next few years to build an enduring iconic company out of India”.

The internal memo further read that the next 10-15 years offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for companies like Swiggy "as the Indian middle class expands and our target segment for convenience grows to 500M (million) users over the period".

"Even globally now everyone acknowledges the TAM (total addressable market) for the food delivery category and how it is still very very early in India," Majety said.